Tuesday, January 31, 2006

I'll be straight up: under ordinary circumstances, I would not care who got picked to be the next MuchMusic VJ. It's been years since I've watched Much with anything approaching regularity.

That said, a fine young local fellow named Zach Goudie is in the running for the job. Zach has been picking up work at CBC Radio, and he's got a fine career in front of him, whether or not he winds up in the Much "environment."

On Jan. 31, 1957, two inches of ice were recorded as covering St. John's Harbour. The above picture is not, of course, from that date; it, rather, was taken decades earlier. It's among the photos in the Geography Collection at Memorial University's Centre for Newfoundland Studies, and was taken before 1901. Here are other pictures from the collection of St. John's harbour - some of which have become famous over the years.

Ice is not commonly seen in St. John's Harbour these days ... the sewage outfall, I would imagine, warms up the water, as does the industrial traffic from shipping.

Reading this posting has confirmed for me that Whit Stillman - who makes movies with the frequency that most people buy houses - is alive and well and living in Paris. And, most importantly, about to get on with making a new movie. (It's been almost eight years, after all.)

Monday, January 30, 2006

Voting at the Paul Butler-hosted forum for the Best Book in Newfoundland and Labrador history clews up Jan. 31 ... meaning you have enough time to pipe up. Click here to get involved, and to read what others have proposed.

On Jan. 30, 1931, John Crosbie was born. Although he has been out of elected office for more than a dozen years, Crosbie still looms large; he comments, of course, frequently on politics, and has also been involved in other issues, from the takeover of FPI to municipal planning in his home community in Portugal Cove.

I've interviewed Crosbie many times over the years, most recently just after Christmas, about the death of his contemporary, Sen. Bill Doody. The interview that stands out the most, though, was one in the fall of 1989, which was exceptional for its duration, subject matter and circumstances. I was writing a piece for the Sunday Express, where I worked at the time, on the 1969 leadership convention of the provincial Liberal party. Crosbie, who was a federal cabinet minister at the time, wanted to put aside more than a few minutes for the interview, and we eventually wound up talking, at length, on a weekend afternoon in which he was with his family in a New Brunswick hotel room and I was on vacation in Ontario. It was a revealing and candid interview and I was grateful for it, and proud of the piece that came out of it.

Crosbie has never held back when handling his targets, and journalists are among them. When I was involved with the local chapter of the Canadian Association of Journalists, we asked Crosbie to attend a forum on the media; he came with all barrels blazing. He made a point afterwards of saying that the individuals in the room weren't on his hit list - just the folks in charge.

This post on the Big Picture blog contains some well-worn business cliches, as reported in a Wall Street Journal column. The WSJ piece is linked, but is available only to subscribers; some of the cliches (as well as old saws that happen to be rooted in at least in some truth) are reported in the post. Helpful reading.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.

These lines from Robert Frost are among the best known of verse from the last century. On Jan. 29, 1963, Frost passed away. His obituary from the New York Times can be read here. A brief essay on "The Road Not Taken"can be read here, revealing that that famous bit of punctuation - the dash after the I in the first line above - was no accident.

Matthew Perry is leading a cast in a pilot for NBC that seems likely to end up the fall schedule. Aaron Sorkin - who's been quiet since leaving the West Wing a while back - is creating the as-yet-untitled show about a ... show. Details here.

Christopher Marlowe is like catnip for people who study the Renaissance, as much for his work as the numerous mysteries surrounding his life. I see a new book, though, deals less with the popular myths and more with the literary record. From the NYT review:

The hot-blooded, wickedly sardonic rebel Marlowe, however, can be glimpsed only intermittently in Park Honan's new biography, "Christopher Marlowe: Poet and Spy." Honan, best known for his widely read "Shakespeare: A Life," has an agenda. He does not want to whitewash Marlowe (hardly possible anyway, given the evidence), but he does want to rescue his subject from the bad-boy image that makes Marlowe a figure of popular myth, and restore him to his full value as poet and dramatist. The result is a book that frustrates, and occasionally infuriates, as often as it fascinates, because at its core the myth fits the facts of Marlowe's life and art only too well, driving Honan into an apologetic swarm of digressions, speculations, half-evasions and logic-choppings.

Not a big round of applause, but I'll keep my out for it ... at the library, at least.

How did Mozart go about his work? We can’t sit with him at the keyboard, but the British Library has compiled this stunning site that gives you a bit of a clue into how he composed.

A manuscript of Mozart’s themes is presented here in a multimedia-enabled format; drag the pages open and see the themes laid out before you. It gets better: you can hear each and every theme played for you.

The British Library offers other options in its Turning The Pages series. For instance, you can see Lewis Carroll’s hand-drawn manuscript for Alice’s Adventures Underground, Leonardo da Vinci’s “mirrored” style of notetaking, and Mercator’s atlas.

The Shockwave plug-in is required for most of the site (especially the most remarkable ones). If you prefer not to load it, you can still view some of what Turning The Pages has to offer.

Thanks to the Peter Shaffer play and film Amadeus, millions of people know about Mozart and his contemporary, Salieri. The storylines of the play and movie emphasized a rivalry for which there is no historical basis, but it’s a delicious bit of storytelling all the same. In this quiz, you can judge for yourself which composer was blessed and which was cursed.

Forget the cliché; everybody judges a book by its cover. Publishers, in fact, count on it, and designers go to lengths to appeal to the eye (and, one hopes, the mind and then the wallet). This site gives book designers their due, and their say. Like many readers, I prefer the text inside the book cover, but I respect how books are designed.

Now that we have a new Parliament shaping up, here’s a bookmark for future reference. How’d They Vote? tracks the performance – or at least the voting record – of members of Parliament. If you’re curious about how your MP voted on a given issue, this is the easiest place to check.

Some 75 years ago, Agatha Christie published Murder at the Vicarage. There have been several adaptations over the years – including one for radio that came through the Soap Detectives site. I subscribed for this podcast a while ago, and since then have had a number of surprises dropped into my computer while I’ve been sleeping. A four-part adaptation of Miss Marple’s novel was one; there’s also been The African Queen as well a Thin Man mystery. There’s something a bit old-fashioned about listening to vicars and villagers chattering away in the background while I’m working. Perhaps it’s a little bit what it was like in the days when radio was king.

This is a Hogwarts parody that is definitely not for the kiddies. It features two bits of animation, featuring finger-puppet versions of Harry Potter, his friends Ron and Hermione, and teachers Snape and Dumbledore, with none other than Voldemort making an appearance. The humour is pointed and tasteless, but I have to say I laughed out loud as the kids ganged up on Voldemort in one of the cartoons.

On Jan. 28, 1951, Jack Benny's television show made its debut. Benny was one of many performers to migrate from radio to television in the 1950s. I was surprised to learn that his first season consisted of just four episodes ... a production run that even British comedians would find slight. You can watch a clip here, at the Museum of Broadcast Communications.

Friday, January 27, 2006

On Jan. 27, 1756, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born. There are celebrations worldwide to mark Mozart's 250th birthday; I have a number of sites in my Surf's Up column, which is in today's Telegram. I'll post the column here this weekend.

In the meantime, look at the remarkable Turning The Pages site from the British Library, and experience Mozart's composition in a new way. As with other manuscripts, you can move through the originals - in this case, Mozart's thematic journal - and hear the music as you move through the notes.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

On Jan. 26, 1929, Jules Feiffer was born. When I think about it, I've been drawn to work about or at least by neurotics, and Feiffer definitely fits that bill.

Feiffer's cartoons ... witty, wordy, scratchy drawings of overtalkative urbanites ... have always been favourites of mine. It doesn't take much to connect the dots between the fretful children of Peanuts and the fretful adults that appeared in Feiffer's panels. (One difference is that Charlie Brown & co. appeared in the daily paper; Feiffer was more in line with the Village Voice and its cousins, even though his editorial cartoons were published everywhere, and he was honoured with the Pulitzer.)

His politics are (or were) left of centre but his targets are all over the map. His characters be sympathetic and yet naive or delusional; his endings were less of a punchline than a wry (sometimes) laconic resignation. And he has a heart; his work for children has been excellent.

It's possible that Feiffer will be better remembered for his writing beyond the cartoon box. Carnal Knowledge is respected as a classic, and his plays are widely admired (even if they still provoke strong emotions).

Absolut vodka is walking away from its famous if not iconic series of advertising. It's remarkable to consider that the series ran for almost 25 years; then again, it obviously worked. It was one of the few campaigns that could parody itself better than anyone else. (The company's website is pretty much an infomercial for Lenny Kravitz; it's hard to know who's pitching what here.)

Chalk it up to another alcohol company bending its marketing to catch the eye of a younger market. Baileys, for instance, has transformed itself from the preferred tippler of respectable (read: older) ladies (and I say that in the knowledge that my wife likes her Baileys on special occasions) to an edgy-yet-classy drink for the 20something set. At least, that's what their current advertising is all about.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Not me ... the talented one. Brad Gushue (no direct relation) speaks with Telegram sports editor Robin Short in a podcast up this week. Click here to download. A video version is also available for iPods.

On Jan. 25, 1962, a bit of banking history was made. The Bank of Montreal announced it was acquiring the Newfoundland Savings Bank; the deal, as I understand it, became official by the close of the fiscal year.

Notes (no pun intended) on the banking institutions of Newfoundland can be found here.

The Muppet Show has become a favourite in our house again, thanks to a) our son finding it funny and b) it being available on CTS, one of the channels on our dish. I'm stumped to explain why it's not in wider syndication. It's also out (finally) on DVD, and is on our communal wish list.

I hadn't seen episodes much beyond when they were aired, and some of the material really is of the Seventies. First, the guests ... when else would a show bend over backwards to book Florence Henderson, Paul Williams, Valerie Harper and Ben Vereen, just to name a few? They were all genuine celebrities at the time and guested during the first season (you know, the period when they hadn't yet figured out what Miss Piggy looked like).

You can guess why bigger stars knocked the door to get a chance to, say, dance Swine Lake with Miss Piggy.

Monday, January 23, 2006

[Surf's Up, as published in the St. John's Telegram on Friday, Jan. 20, 2006. Click here to read recent Surf's Up columns.]

Here's one of my favourite headlines from the federal election campaign, that kind of summed up some of the problems the Liberal party has had in persuading voters: "Martin releases new, interactive Wikiplatform."

It wasn't a real headline, of course ... instead, it appeared on the parody site Derision 2006, one of the many websites that have been competing for readers' attention during this campaign.

The joke worked because it has seemed like - in keeping with the wiki ethic of opening up the creation of content to anyone with a keyboard - the Liberal platform truly was being modified on the fly.

This week's column is all about politics and the election. We'll have the serious bits in a moment, but let's look first at sites that remind you politics isn't always as dry as toast.

Derision 2006Politics is serious business, to be sure, but it's also easy pickings for satirists, joke-tellers, comedians and pretty much anyone with a funny bone. Derision 2006 is a nonpartisan effort, which is one way of saying that everyone is fair game for a ribbing. Too bad the election ends next week; I'd like to see this kind of humour find a more permanent home online.

The HammerThe Hammer started swinging again during this campaign … well, a bit. The Canadian satire site, which seemed to have been quite dormant, revived itself for the campaign, although postings have been less than frequent.

Whether you've been largely disconnected or deeply immersed in this election campaign, there's been plenty online for you to consider. Indeed, the parties - and the partisans - moved their debates, activities and promotions online in a way that makes the 2004 campaign now seem kind of old-fashioned.

ConfeederationThe candidates themselves, of course, have had plenty to say ... although not always online. Indeed, I haven't been much in the habit of browsing the candidate sites, unless I've gone looking for something specific (journalists are apt to get tangled in these sudden spurts of research, after all). Largely, candidate sites read pretty much like the brochures that get tucked in your mailbox. Some candidates, though, have taken to blogging. Confeederation is an aggregator, which means it runs a feed (hence the pun in the title) of blogs written by candidates.

Liberal blogsBlogging ToriesBlogging DippersMany bloggers of a political bent, of course, have already made up their minds about how they'll vote; indeed, the campaign is why they're into the whole blogging bit in the first place. ("Dippers," by the way, is web-speak for the NDPers out there.) The postings in these aggregators are arranged as they're posted, so you'll see the freshest stuff first … but not necessarily the best. Keep digging to get a sense of the range of material you can find. If you're interested in public debate, or need to get up to speed on issues and personalities around the country, or just want to see how nasty or funny (or sometimes both) politics can get, try these sites and the scores of bloggers keeping up with the campaign.

Election Stock Market Business students at the University of British Columbia have connected two public passions - politics and betting - with a virtual stock market that lets players park their "money" on "futures" of the political parties. It's an interesting gauge of where the market, um, electorate is heading.

Election Predictor The Hill & Knowlton consulting company offers this bit of candy for the politically minded. You start with a base set of data, and can then start playing with the variables. You can see how even modest changes in things like the swing vote can throw a curveball into election night.

Election TalkThere's plenty else to see on the Nodice site, but the Election Talk section is an example of how online debates have been forged this year. There are thousands of posts - although you may notice that many are coming from a limited number of posters. Hmmm. You'll also find some reasonable discourse, and, in any event, it's hard to knock a forum that allows people to toss around ideas, argue with zeal, and pick nits in the political process. That's democracy for you.

My Instagram feed

Why Dot Dot Dot?

That is, where did this blog get its name?

Dot Dot Dot is Morse code for the letter 'S,' the full message Guglielmo Marconi claimed to have received atop Signal Hill in St. John's in 1901. It ushered in the age of telecommunications. My maternal grandfather worked as a telegraph operator for Canadian Marconi on Signal Hill for many years.
As well, I have a habit of overusing the ellipsis when I write ... as frequent readers might notice.